Positive Reinforcement training has become very popular in recent years because of its “dog friendly” approach. Though many humans find it undesirable because of the need to carry food or some sort of reward, one factor that doesn’t seem to be resonating with people is that positive reinforcement is not a training style.

Welcome to a new series from the dean of Butt Sniffers Academy, Tracy Pritchard. Tracy understands that training dogs often means helping their humans understand and communicate with their pups. BSA Free Online Courses are geared toward the two-legged part of the training equation. With deep insight and actionable advice, Tracy aims to help you supplement your dog’s curriculum.

This installation from Dean Pritchard explains how important it is to demonstrate your value to your dog.

When we think of dog training we don’t put a whole lot of thought into making ourselves a powerful source in the dog’s life. We take for granted our value in our relationship with our dogs. We forget or have never thought about the fact that dogs are incapable of putting it in to perspective how much we love them and that everything we do is to provide for them.

They don’t think about how much money we spend on food/treats, or the hours spent shopping to find the perfect toy because, as their human, we are concerned about their entertainment. (more…)

With a home base in the Central West End, she has been seeing cats and dogs in their home environments for 13 years. Before that, she worked ER and critical care in addition to a general practice. Prior to that, Dr. Clary worked with farm animals in a rural veterinary practice.

She loves what she does, and we appreciate the opportunity to share what we learned from her about taking care of your dog in the heat of summer.

We’ve noticed a few trends over the years. The Doggy Hangover is one. Better behavior through socialization is another.

But we’ve also noticed trends among our human clientele. Specifically, those with TWB T-shirts.

We see our happy little pieces of apparel popping up in Facebook and on Instagram. And we couldn’t be more pumped.

So, we thought we’d take it a step further and invite ourselves along on your next vacation. You don’t mind, do you? We’ll just go ahead and crawl into your suitcase and try to make your trip a little more memorable.

Here’s how. When you snap a vacation photo in your TWB gear and tag us in your post, we’ll repost it for our entire cage-free canine community to see. Then, we’ll respond with a photo of your dog enjoying an all-expense-paid daycare and boarding vacation at The Watering Bowl, courtesy of you.

At The Watering Bowl, we like to think of ourselves as a cage-free canine community. Now, we’re taking that designation a step further with by helping to open our first-ever dog park in the St. Louis community.

True, we were founded on socialization. The pack mentality ingrains discipline and purpose—especially in a cage-free environment.

And Butt Sniffers Academy sprung from that same idea. We combine socialization and healthy instruction to bring dogs and their owners closer together.

Just ask Tracy Pritchard, our dean. She could go on about it all day.

But we also see value in hyper-focused, individualized classes. That’s why we offer a whole set of Private Lessons. Whether you’d like to work on a specific behavior, learn a new trick or package your training with a day of daycare, we offer a whole curriculum of one-on-one opportunities to learn.